Editor's Introduction i 

Editor's Introduction 

The papers in this issue all address so~ aspect of the incorporation and disincorporation of 
unequal places and regions into world-systems. They address the acctnnulation processes that 
drive capitalist expansion as well as the ideological work that helps sustain hegemony and 
reproduce inequality. They also point to counter-hegemonic dynamics that help drive world-
systemic change. As the daily headlines continue to bring forth new signals of U.S. hegemonic 
decline and of a world-system that is in deep crisis, these accounts can aid our effort to 
understand our current predicament and perhaps shed light on the various paths that might lead 
to more desirable alternatives. 

Papers by Adam Drisco ll and Edward Kick and by Thomas Hall lead this issue by 
exploring how world-system peripheries are incorporated and reproduced over long periods of 
time. They refocus our lens on regions rather than states as sites of important world- system 
dynamics, reminding us of the centrality of underlying logics and processes of world-systems. 
Driscoll and Kick show how Britain's reliance on and development of extractive industries in 
eastern North Carolina during its period of hegemony generated "degenerative sectors" oriented 
towards production for export, which undennined domestic development and ensured the 
region's continued peripheralization even after British hegemonic decline. This fascinating study 
helps explain why poor regions stay poor, and it may enhance readers ' understandings of how 
such world-system dynamics ensure that countries of the global South remain on the bottom of 
the economic hierarchy. 

Taking an even longer time frame, Hall's study comparing China's and the U.S. 
southwests similarly looks at the effects of world-systemic hierarchies on regions, illustrating 
how the dynamics of frontier areas perpetuate long-term inequalities over time. Interestingly, 
Hall finds that patterns seen in frontiers are connnon across different historical world-systems, 
despite some important differences in the ~thods of incorporation of borderlands. What seem; 
key to Hall's account is variation in how native populations are incorporated into the world-
system In China, native groups were mobilized into administration, unlike in the United States. 
Despite the relative neglect of frontiers in the study of world-system;, Hall argues that these 
regions and people play important, and often the most visible, roles in system change. 

The paper by Erynn Masi de Casanova and Barbara Sutton explores the globalized 
consumption practices of cosmetic surgery tourism They put forward the concept of ''transnational 
body projects " to draw our attention to how capitalist expansion is extending into ever more 
personaL physical spaces. Examining media discourses in different countries, they show how the 
connnodification of bodies and beauty reinforce and replicate world-system inequities between 
core and periphery countries as well as gender and class. The article also contributes to analyses of 
tourism as a form of transnational consumption that has been important to capitalist acctnnulation 
processes in more recent times. 

World-systems analysts have argued that hegemons in decline tend to rely more heavily 
on coercion, thereby deepening the contradictions between practices and the ideals that 
legitimate hegemony. The article by Eric Bonds illustrates this dynamic as seen in contemporary 
U.S. policy. He demonstrates how U.S. government discourses have been used, often cltnnSily 
and unconvincingly, to justify illegitimate violence , providing evidence of the decline of U.S. 
hegemony. Such decline is apparent in the more frequent and blatant reliance on military force 
instead of nonviolent, persuasive forms of influence characteristic in times of less contested 

Copyright ©2013,American Sociological Association, Volume XIX, Number 1, Pages i-ii, ISSN 1076-156X 



ii Journal of World-Systems Research 

hegemony. The recent scrutiny by the United Nations of the U.S. use of drone strikes to counter 
global comterterrorism reinforces the conclusions of Bond's analysis. 

The question this study raises for those concerned with human rights and the advance of 
humanitarian norms is how much a hegemon can stretch the distance between normative claim: 
and actual practice before its hold on power cnnnbles. How much more violent and blatant might 
hegemonic violence become? What impact do such contradictions have on the viability of 
international law and institutions? On the one hand, Bond's work reinforces the idea advanced in 
the work of scholars like Kathryn Sikkink, whose recent book The Justice Cascade demonstrates 
a gradual strengthening of international human rights norm;, often evidenced in behavior such as 
that doctmented in Bond's article. By appealing to humanitarian norms even to justify bad 
behavior, states signal the legitimacy and significance of international norms. Will such norms 
eventually render the contradictions of hegemonic behavior untenable? Or will hegemonic 
violence mdermine the very idea of a world-system based on human rights? 

Reinforcing the idea that systemic contradictions help sow the seeds for the rise of 
counter-hegemonic and anti-systemic challenges, Brent Kaup 's analysis illustrates how capitalist 
development and the processes of displacement and exclusion it generates forced population 
movements in Bolivia that encouraged the emergence of new forces of resistance. Countering the 
traditional structural impediments to the creation of alliances between peasants and industrialized 
workers, more recent trends have thrust dislocated peasants and workers into common spaces in 
the margins of society. It is here where their ability to develop more systemic analyses that 
account for their shared grievances and the common sources of those grievances contributes to 
the fonnation, or what Kaup calls "reintegration" of new and potentially potent alliances. Indeed , 
these dynamics contributed to the election of Evo Morales, South America's first indigenous 
president, who has helped fuel Latin American comter-hegemonic resistance to U.S. hegemony. 
Thus, the contradictions of advanced capitalism are expanding the :fissures in the foundation of 
the existing hegemonic regime. 

Asafa Jalata 's contribution complements Hall's analysis of how the United States 
incorporates frontier regions by manipulating and pitting different indigenous populations 
against one another. He details the extreme violence that has been essential to the expansion of 
the modem world-system, arguing that such violence is more accurately labeled "terrorism" 
This paper demonstrates the ways ideology is used to negate the experiences and history of 
indigenous peoples. Jalata calls for a retelling of history as a necessary step towards challenging 
"hegemonic knowledge" and its reproduction in public discourse and the academy. By framing 
colonial genocide against indigenous populations as terrorism, his work helps counter the erasure 
of history and, complementing Bond's article, finiher challenges the legitimacy of a system 
whose authority is based on claims of human rights that are contradicted in this retelling of 
history from the perspective ofthe periphery. 

I've offered just a few thoughts to entice readers to dig into this issue of the Journal of 
World-Systems Research and to consider how the ideas put forward by these authors can advance 
new thinking and guide practices in a time of great uncertainty and change. In addition to these 
great articles we've got reviews of some important recent books on themes related to the study of 
world-systems. I am grateful to our contributors, our editorial team, and to the many reviewers 
who have contributed to making this issue possible, and I hope readers are pleased with the 
results of our collective efforts. 

Jackie Smith, University of Pittsburgh